Why do they call it Fat Tuesday? The term comes from the last day to use up anything that has fat in it before Lent begins because it would go rancid sitting around the next 40 days. Just like using up the last bits that have fat it’s time to drag out those WordPress drafts and get them published. It’s time to freshen up and renew all your Social Media outlets for 2013. The bloggers here at the cyber-wigwam are busy preparing for a spring full of wonderful content.

Here at the cyber Wigwam Santa clued us in on what he found in the blogosphere in 2012. Do a quick search on “blogosphere” and you see it could be viewed as synonymous with a word cloud. Interestly enough there is a site that will examine your blog site and give you a word cloud for what it finds. Here are two examples of a word cloud from lept Like a Blog. They have differing font selections. Once the word analysis is complete you can modify the

characteristics of the words selecting different fonts, shapes and spelling directions. You can develop your own word cloud by visiting http://www.wordle.net/create. The bloggers here at Council Blogs made another word cloud of Council Blogs, this WordPress site. Here’s the result. Not that it has any direct bearing; the ability to visually and graphically give meaning to a pile of data brings a new dimension to internet marketing.

For example, we all have a gold mine on our hip. Let me ask you, if I were to randomly dial people that are listed in your contacts on your cell phone, how many of the people I would get a hold of would be able to tell me what you do in your business. It is amazing to me how many people tell me, “not very many.”

Sales is a people business! Knowing the people you are doing business increasing your production and income. People typically do business with people that they know, like and trust. Bob Burg shares in his book, “Endless Referrals”, that every person knows 250 people on average. So if that’s the case, why aren’t you leveraging your cell phone to access the hundreds or thousands of people you have access to before you venture out into the cold market?

With the layered construction or additive process of 3D printing it is possible to print multiple parts at one time. It is even conceivable to print a whole assembly in one printing. The individual parts can be interlinked as you construct them. Here is a chain, the type you would find on a bicycle, developed in one printing. This implies that 3D printing or additive manufacturing allows shapes to be created that would otherwise be impossble to assemble or construct with more traditional methods. Here at the Cyber Wigwam we demonstrate the capability to print multiple parts interlinked in the same setup with our new acquisition, the Makerbot Replicator. Now all our bloggers at the Cyber Wigwam have a personalized keychain with their name embossed as part of the print.

If you would like to see the progress of the projects undertaken with the Makerbot you can visit our special blog by clicking here.

2. Upload a colorful slide to serve as your mini advertisement on your LinkedIn Profile. Some suggestions are to use pictures and large font to help your mini ad stand out.

SlideShare is a social networking site in its own right. The nice thing is that Slide decks you upload can be embedded similar to YouTube videos and you gain in SEO by the additional links you garner as well as the increased exposure of spreading your message in other avenues.

Here at the cyber wigwam the bloggers are setting up pins for their Pinterest boards. The natural question that arises is how can you make the pin look like you want it to or how can you make the picture look the way you would like it to. The Chiefs met and charged one of the braves with getting the screen rulers out and determining what size the Pinterest “cover” ends up being at 100%. They determined the size depicted in the picture. As long as you maintain the aspect ratio, pictures can be used that are larger but you need to maintain this ratio if you want to the whole picture to show in the cover thumbnail. Some other braves went on to determine the size of the thumbnail for the non-cover pins and those are posted in the Social Media Bloggerfly Pinterest board. You can visit by clicking here. If you have a Pinterest account feel free to follow or re-pin.

TRAFFIC! The latest stats on Pinterest show a 2,600% year over year growth rate in unique visitors. Here at the Cyber Wigwam we consider Pinterest as virtual window shopping. And just like real window shopping, occasionally someone drops in and buys something. The visual appeal of color is what seems to have supercharged Pinterest to take off from nowhere, a year ago, to one of the top 30 sites. What some retailers have found is that the visual stimulation can drive extra traffic to your site and possibly buy something. The bloggers here at Council Blogs are gearing up with a class in Pinterest. In our study of Pinterest we see a loyal following of specialty items, Whole Foods as one that stands out. Shoes in particular seem to roll out easily among the myriad of pictorial glimpses as you stroll the virtual sidewalk. Not hampered by geographic constraints you can see the gamut of offerings from around the world. Recipes is another one. Don’t visit while you are hungry as you can find pictures as well as the recipes for all kinds of delectable edibles. Now, if we could only find the recipe for Karidopita at the Khloros Kafe. If you are interested in seeing what the bloggers have found in their exploration of Pinterest drop a comment and stay tuned.

Content Management Systems or CMS are programs that make it easy to have a web presence. All the pieces that would traditionally be nit-picky are taken care of by the program so you can concentrate on the “Content” of your marketing message. Here at the Cyber Wigwam the bloggers like to use WordPress for their CMS. WordPress.com is easy to set up an account and generally stable. For more adventuresome types you can develop what is called a “hosted” site where the WordPress engine is extensible to all kinds of functionality. The basic WordPress framework is available from wordpress.org for free. That organization also maintains a list of popular plugins to add more functionality beyond supporting blog posts and pages. Plugins are also generally free. With the release of version 3 the custom post type structure has allowed programmers to easily write a myriad of new functionality. My personal favorites are for FAQs and newsletter support. What does the future hold? Certainly, the popularity of WordPress highlights the importance of CMS systems in helping more people develop a web presence. If you want to see what some people have done with their WordPress sites follow the links to the bloggers to the right–>.

We think of social media as BIG. Yes, here at the cyber wigwam we consider it a big advantage to increase the Findability of our business on the internet. It could almost be as BIG as the Hindenburg was in terms of aircraft as its impact on your next marketing campaign. Feel free to browse the posts from our club’s sites. Stop and comment when you find something interesting or noteworthy or you just want to make a comment.